May 7, 1969

The Great Put On Era Coming To End

Future historians may look back to the decade of the nineteen sixties as the era of The Great Put On.

Without a doubt we have taken seriously some of the silliest and most outrageous nonsense of all time.

Fortunately for American culture the influence of un-persons seems to be waning.

Take the campus hullabaloo, for example.  It has long been apparent to those outside the academic world that the demands of black students for "African studies" were based largely on their inability to cope with relevant, but tough courses.

Thus we have young Negroes at Cornell University demanding $2,000 for bongo drums with which to celebrate Malcolm X day; and, incredibly, the faculty kicking in with "protection money" to fly two students to New York to buy the drums.

Other blacks have demanded $35 a week spending money "because the buying habits of Negroes are different from that of whites."  White students in integrated dormitories have been forcefully ejected by Negroes and the buildings turned into ghettos.  Libraries have been vandalized and class rooms terrorized because the black un-students can't cut the mustard in a non-segregated society.

The white man is so suspect by Negroes that only a black man of stature could put the Afro-American syndrome in its proper perspective.

Finally, however, a Negro of stature has performed this valuable service.  Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1963 march on Washington, said the other day: "Negro students are suffering the shock of integration and searching for an easy way out of their problems.  What in hell are soul courses worth in the real world?  They want to know if you can do mathematics and write a correct sentence."

He called on college and university officials to "stop capitulating to the stupid demands of Negro students," and instead "see that they get the remedial training they need."

Now that a responsible Negro has taken a positive stand, those of us who share concern over the problems of past and present discrimination can rejoin in efforts to solve them.

The Great Put On is not confined to the civil rights movement.  The hokum of un-merit was launched in the art world and it probably will persist there the longest.

When young people of post-World War II came into their majority they found themselves handicapped by lack of adequate training in the arts.

Without ability, they fell back on bluff.  Their elders, whose confidence had been shaken by the World War and the Great Depression that preceded it, were taken in by the bluff.

Thus we accepted - or, rather, failed to reject - modern art, teenage singers with tin ears, and obscene literature.

These afflictions still plague us.

The Cleveland Museum has just awarded prizes of $1,000 or more to a 30-foot, red-flannel bean bag; a stairway laid flat-on the floor; and a mound of wax drippings.

Other "art juries" have rewarded solid black and solid white paintings on the basis of "creative brush strokes."

Sculpture and painting today is the very bad joke of very untalented bunco operators.  Anyone who would put money into this popular trash deserves to be taken.  A fool and his money are soon parted - and the sooner the better.

In the realm of international affairs, the Great Put On of the communists seems finally to be running its course.

The notion that those people who resist attack are themselves "aggressors" is still parroted by cowards and dupes.  However, our leaders are showing signs they no longer feel constrained to "dialog" with jerks.

The illusion that freedom and wealth come automatically with independence has painfully faded for most of the so-called emerging nations.

"Agrarian reform" has been shown to be but bait for a police state trap in those places that have embraced communism.

Communism contains the seeds of its own destruction.  The harvest is on its way because we no longer wonder if maybe, after all, there is something of value in the planting.

We are still hung up on dozens of other Great Put Ons, but the courage to declare that the emperor has no clothes is ever more present.

We are gradually disabusing ourselves of the lazy idea that only experts can know the good and truthful.

What the majority likes and reveres has been right for society ultimately.

It is everyone's obligation as well as privilege, to speak out.  When the majority speaks, common sense listens.

Author: Lindsey Williams